THUNDERBALL (FILM)

'''Thunderball''' is a 1965 spy film. It is the fourth film in the James Bond series, and the fourth to star Sean Connery as MI6 secret agent James Bond, 007. The film follows Bond's mission (Code name: Thunderball) to find two NATO nuclear bombs stolen by SPECTRE, who hold the world to ransom for £100 million in diamonds, in exchange for not destroying an unspecified major city in either England or the United States of America (later revealed to be Miami). The search leads Bond to the Bahamas, where he encounters Emilio Largo, the card-playing, one-eyed SPECTRE Number Two. Helped by the CIA and Largo's mistress, Bond's search culminates in underwater battle with Largo's frogmen. Though some enthusiasts consider ''Goldfinger'' (1964) the best 007 film, ''Thunderball'' is the most-watched, with almost 140 million paid tickets and ''Goldfinger'' the second-most watched 007 film, with some 130 million tickets sold.

Contents

Plot

Cast (in order of film's credits)

Vehicles and gadgets

Production

Shooting locations

Controversy

Soundtrack

Release and reception

References

Further reading

External links

Plot

The story begins with James Bond at the funeral of Colonel Jacques Bouvar The name is often miss-spelled. Officially it is spelled 'Bouvar' on Thunderball Ultimate Edition DVD Region 2. See Disc One, English subtitles for the film, and Disc Two under "OO7 Mission Control / Villains / Jacques Bouvar" , a leading SPECTRE agent (SPECTRE number 6), who had murdered two British agents, colleagues of his. Afterwards, Bond notices the Colonel's widow opens a car door for herself (something women would not do); in fact, "she" is Bouvar in disguise. Following her to her château, Bond confronts Bouvar, fights and kills him, then escapes flying a jetpack to his Aston Martin DB5, parked outside the château, fending off Bouvar's men with the car's water cannons.
Having killed Bouvar, Bond is sent by M to a health clinic to improve his health. While massaged by physiotherapist Patricia Fearing, Bond encounters Count Lippe, a shifty man with a criminal tattoo (Tong- Red Dragon of Macau) on his left wrist. The suspicious Bond searches Lippe's room, but is seen leaving it by Lippe's clinic neighbor who is bandaged because of plastic surgery.
Later, Lippe tries to murder Bond with a spinal traction machine, but Bond is rescued by Patricia Fearing. Bond avenges the attempt by trapping Lippe in a steam bath, although the Count survives. Circumstances become stranger when Bond finds a dead bandaged man, and survives a second murder attempt.

The dead man is François Derval, a French NATO pilot due to be part of the crew flying an Avro Vulcan jet bomber aeroplane loaded with two nuclear bombs. He is replaced by a SPECTRE henchman named Angelo, who was surgically altered to resemble the dead Derval. Because he feels underpaid for what he had to go through, however, Angelo demands more money under threat of thwarting the hijacking, which is promised to him. Once airborne, Angelo gasses the other crew, deviates course, and then lands it in the Bahamian sea, sinking it to the shallow bottom. Meanwhile, the hijacker pilot, Angelo, continues breathing underwater from a secret air supply but cannot free himself from his seat harness. Eventually, Emilio Largo, SPECTRE Number Two, kills Angelo by cutting open the air hose, and steals the atomic bombs. Largo and his men camouflage the plane.
The SPECTRE bomb theft crisis summons Bond and all other "00" agents to Whitehall. En route, Count Lippe chases Bond on the road, shooting at him; Bond is about to activate his car's weapons when a motorcyclist shoots a missile which kills Lippe. SPECTRE Number One ordered Lippe's killing, because the Count did not foresee Angelo's betraying demand for extra money.
Bond attends the emergency meeting where all MI6 "00" agents in Europe are briefed and assigned (though only 006's face is clearly seen in the first time "00" agents other than Bond are on-screen). Initially, M assigns Bond to Canada, but, from a photograph, Bond recognizes the NATO observer pilot as the cadaver he encountered in the health clinic. Since the NATO observer's sister, Domino Derval (Claudine Auger), is in Nassau, M reassigns him there, to investigate her. Coincidentally, she is Largo's playgirl mistress. Bond exploits the connection to approach Largo after meeting Domino while scuba diving.
An additional cinema character, not in the novel, is Fiona Volpe. She is the SPECTRE assassin responsible for substituting Angelo for Derval, and for killing Count Lippe. She tries to kill Bond after a rendezvous with Largo in Nassau; but later, while chasing the escaped Bond, she is shot in the back with the bullet meant for Bond while dancing with him at a local nightclub's Junkanoo celebration; Bond leaves her body at a table, asking: "Do you mind if my friend sits this one out? She's just dead."

In Nassau, Bond and CIA case officer Felix Leiter search for the Vulcan by helicopter, eventually finding it underwater, along with the crew corpses and Angelo the counterfeit NATO observer pilot. Afterwards, Bond tells Domino that Largo killed her brother, pleading for her help in finding the nuclear bombs. She tells Bond where and how to replace a SPECTRE agent on a mission with Largo, who is retrieving the bombs from a submarine hiding place. It is when Bond (in the frog suit taken from one of Largo's henchmen) discovers Largo's plans to detonate the bombs in Miami Beach.
En route to the bomb cave where the bombs will be temporarily stored, Bond's cover is blown by Largo. After an underwater fight with Largo's men in the bomb cave, from which Bond barely escapes, Leiter rescues Bond. Bond tells Leiter of the bombs' location and Largo's plans to strike Miami Beach; Leiter orders a unit of United States Navy SEALs to parachute to the area for underwater battle against SPECTRE frogmen. Bond joins the fray, killing several SPECTRE frogmen with high tech submarine weapons, and his knife and hands. The sudden appearance of sharks forces the SEALs and the SPECTREs to join forces against them; the remaining SPECTRE frogmen surrender.
As the battle ends, Largo escapes to the ''Disco Volante'' (Italian: ''Flying Saucer''), which still has one bomb aboard; Bond follows him and sneaks aboard. In the yacht, during their vicious hand-to-hand fight, Largo gains the upper hand and is about to shoot Bond, however, Domino shoots a spear into Largo's back. With the dying Largo death-locked to the uncontrolled yacht's wheel, Bond and Domino jump overboard as it runs aground and explodes. A sky hook-equipped U.S. Navy airplane rescues Bond and Domino from the sea.

Cast (in order of film's credits)

Main articles: List of James Bond henchmen in Thunderball, List of James Bond allies in Thunderball



★ 'Sean Connery' as 'James Bond' — MI6s OO7

★ 'Claudine Auger' as ' Dominique 'Domino' Derval'^[1] — Largo's mistress

★ 'Adolfo Celi' as 'Emilio Largo' — SPECTRE Number Two — (dubbed by Robert Rietty)

★ 'Luciana Paluzzi' as 'Fiona Volpe' — SPECTRE agent

★ 'Rik Van Nutter' as 'Felix Leiter' — CIA agent

★ 'Guy Doleman' as 'Count Lippe' — SPECTRE agent

★ 'Molly Peters' as 'Patricia Fearing' — a physiotherapist ^[2]

★ 'Martine Beswick' as 'Paula Caplan' — OO7's assistant in Nassau

★ 'Bernard Lee' as 'M' — Head of MI6

★ 'Desmond Llewelyn' as 'Q' — MI6 Quartermaster

★ 'Lois Maxwell' as 'Miss Moneypenny' — M's secretary

★ 'Roland Culver' as 'Home Secretary'^[3] — British government official

★ 'Earl Cameron' as 'Pinder Romania' — MI6's man in Nassau

★ 'Paul Stassino' as 'Francois Derval / Angelo' ^{[4] [5]} — Derval is a NATO representative / Angelo is hired to impersonate Derval.

★ 'Rose Alba' as 'Madame Bouvar' ^[6] — widow of Jacques Bouvar

★ 'Philip Locke' as 'Vargas' — Largo's henchman

★ 'George Pravda' as 'Professor Ladislav Kutze' — Largo's employee

★ 'Michael Brennan' as 'Janni' — Largo's henchman

★ 'Edward Underdown' as 'Air Marshal Sir John'^[7] — he briefs the "OO" agents on flying range of Vulcan Bomber

★ 'Reginald Beckwith' as 'Kenniston' — The Home Secretary's junior

★ 'Harold Sanderson' as 'Hydrofoil Captain' — Largo's employee

★ 'Bob Simmons' as 'Colonel Jacques Bouvar' — SPECTRE Number Six (uncredited)

★ 'Bill Cummings' as 'Quist' — Largo's henchman (uncredited)

★ 'Anthony Dawson' as 'Ernst Stavro Blofeld' — SPECTRE Number One — voiced by 'Eric Pohlmann' (both uncredited)

Vehicles and gadgets

Main articles: List of James Bond vehicles, List of James Bond gadgets

Agent 007's escape flight with the Bell Textron jet belt in ''Thunderball's pre-title teaser.

In ''Thunderball's pre-title teaser, the Aston Martin DB5 (introduced in ''Goldfinger''), reappears armed with rear-firing water cannon, seeming noticeably weathered — just dust and dirt raised, moments earlier, by Bond's landing with the "Bell Rocket Belt" (developed by Bell Aircraft Corporation). The rocket belt James Bond uses to escape the château actually worked, (and was used many times, before and after, for entertainment, most notably at Super Bowl I and at scheduled performances at the 1964-1965 New York World's Fair). ^[8].
Bond also has a secret tape recorder hidden within a book in his hotel room, which he uses to learn that Quist is hiding in his bathroom.
Q branch equip Bond with gadgets throughout the story; Bond is equipped in the field, (first time in the films). The kit includes a signal-emitting "homer" capsule (swallowed by the agent so HQ can trace his whereabouts), a scuba diver's wristwatch and an underwater infrared camera that both double as Geiger counters, and a miniature Very pistol which will fire a red flare as a distress signal.
Bond also receives a spear gun-armed underwater jet pack scuba (allowing the frogman to manoeuvre faster than other frogmen). Designed by Jordan Klein, green dye was meant to be used by Bond as a smoke screen to escape pursuers.^[9] Instead Ricou Browning, the film's underwater director, used it to make Bond's arrival more dramatic.^[10]
Last, Bond is issued a very small breathing device, a mouthpiece with two small air cylinders mounted to its sides (and ported unnoticed), providing the user with minutes of air underwater. With it, Bond escapes Largo's sealed shark pool via the shark entry tunnel. Its operation remains unclear; Q merely tells him, "In case a rebreather is not available, use this", yet the statement does not make it a rebreather.
At ''Thunderball's release, there was confusion as to whether or not such a rebreather existed; most Bond gadgets, while implausible, often are based upon real technology. In the real world, a rebreather could not be so small, as it has no room for the breathing bag, while the alternative open-circuit scuba releases exhalation bubbles, which the film device does not. In fact, it was made with two CO2 bottles glued together and painted, and a little mouthpiece put on^[10]; so, there is no answer to "How?" or "For how long does it work?" When the Royal Corps of Engineers asked Peter Lamont: How long can a man use the device underwater? The answer was: How long can you hold your breath?^[12] Nevertheless, the rebreather reappeared in ''Die Another Day'' (2002).
The sky hook, used to rescue Bond at the end of the film, could also be considered as a gadget provided for Bond’s use.

Production

Originally meant as the first James Bond film, ''Thunderball'' was the center of complicated legal battles, from 1961 to the present. Former Ian Fleming collaborators Kevin McClory and Jack Whittingham sued him shortly after the 1961 publication of the ''Thunderball'' novel, claiming he based it upon the screenplay the trio had earlier written in a failed cinematic translation of James Bond. The lawsuit was settled out of court; McClory retained certain screen rights to the novel's story, plot, and characters. By then, James Bond was a box office success, and series producers Broccoli and Saltzman feared a rival McClory film beyond their control; they agreed to McClory's producer's credit of a cinematic ''Thunderball'', with them as executive producers.
According to editor Peter Hunt, ''Thunderball's release was delayed for 3 months, from September 'til December of 1965, after he met Arnold Picker of United Artists, and convinced him it would be impossible to edit the film to a high enough standard without the extra time.^[13]. Another claim is that it was because of its over-long running time; four-and-a-half hours, reported ''Variety'' newspaper.
Forty years later, on November 20, 2005, many of the surviving cast and crew gathered in London for a special 40th Anniversary screening.

Shooting locations

Filmed in the Caribbean, ''Thunderball'' is remarkable for its underwater action scenes, which greatly contributed to popularising scuba diving as recreational sport. While in Nassau, during the final shooting days, special effects supervisor John Stears was supplied experimental rocket fuel to use in exploding villain Largo's yacht, the ''Disco Volante''. Ignoring the true power of the volatile fuel, Stears doused the entire yacht with it, took cover, and then detonated the boat. The resultant massive explosion shattered windows along Bay Street in Nassau roughly thirty miles away.^[14]

★ Pinewood Studios, Buckinghamshire,

★ Château d'Anet, near Dreux, France - ''fight in pre-credit sequence''

★ Paris, France - ''exterior of SPECTRE headquarters''

★ Silverstone racing circuit - ''chase involving Count Lippe, Fiona Volpe and James Bond's Aston Martin DB5''

★ Nassau, Paradise Island, The Bahamas

★ Miami, United States

Controversy

The source materials for this film have long been controversial among James Bond film aficionados. The original ''Thunderball'' novel was written by Ian Fleming based upon a screenplay created for television. Fleming wrote the screenplay, and later, several other screenwriters and producers helped develop, expand, and refine the story. Nothing came of their efforts, and Fleming novelized the material into his ninth Bond novel. Consequently,one of his collaborators, Kevin McClory, sued him for plagiarism. Fleming settled out of court in 1963. A book by Robert Sellers, The Battle for Bond, covers this controversy quite extensively.
Later, in 1964, EON producers Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman made a deal with McClory to film an adaptation of the novel. Like most James Bond films, it was promoted as 'Ian Fleming's Thunderball'; however, the screenplay is officially credited to Richard Maibaum and John Hopkins, but also is identified as ''based on an original screenplay by Jack Whittingham'' and as ''based on the original story by Kevin McClory, Jack Whittingham, and Ian Fleming''.
To date, ''Thunderball'' has been twice adapted for the cinema, although further adaptations have been planned, provoking lawsuits. In 1983, McClory produced an unofficial remake (i.e. not of the EON canon) titled ''Never Say Never Again'', with Sean Connery as James Bond.
There is a plot-based controversy amongst aficionados as to whether or not James Bond deliberately manoeuvres Fiona Volpe into the path of a SPECTRE gunman's bullet while they dance at Junkanoo celebrations, given that the literary James Bond dislikes killing in cold blood.

Soundtrack

Release and reception

References

1. In early drafts of the screenplay Domino's name was Dominetta Palazzi. When Claudine Auger was cast as Domino the name was changed to Derval to reflect her nationality (John Cork, Commentary 1, Thunderball Ultimate Edition DVD Region 2)
2. Molly Peters states that she is a physiotherapist (Molly Peters, Commentary 1, Thunderball Ultimate Edition DVD Region 2
3. incorrectly listed as 'Foreign Secretary' in credits
4. Angelo is the surname of Largo's henchman; Pat Fearing informs Bond that the man in bandages is 'Mr. Angelo'
5. Stassino is incorrectly listed as 'Palazzi' in the credits. The name 'Palazzi' was the original surname of the Derval siblings in the script; when Claudine Auger was cast as Domino the name was changed to Derval to reflect her nationality. The credits were not changed to reflect this. (John Cork, Commentary 1, Thunderball Ultimate Edition DVD Region 2)
6. incorrectly listed as 'Madame Boitier' in credits
7. listed as 'Air Vice Marshal' in credits
8. History of the Bell rocket belt
9. John Cork, Commentary 2, Thunderball Ultimate Edition DVD Region 2
10. Ricou Browning, Commentary 1, Thunderball Ultimate Edition DVD Region 2
11. Ricou Browning, Commentary 1, Thunderball Ultimate Edition DVD Region 2
12. Peter Lamont in "The Thunderball Phenomenon" 1995 MGM/UA Home Entertainment, Disc 2, Thunderball Ultimate Edition DVD Region 2
13. Peter Hunt, Commentary 2, Thunderball Ultimate Edition DVD Region 2
14. John Stears in "The Making of Thunderball" 1995 MGM/UA Home Entertainment, Disc 2, Thunderball Ultimate Edition DVD Region 2


★ Scott A. Thompson, ''Final Cut - The Post-War B-17 Flying Fortress: The Survivors'', Pictorial Histories Publishing Company, Missoula, Montana, Revised Edition, First Printing, August 2000, ISBN 1-57510-077-0, pages 138-143.

Further reading

★ ''Casino Royale history'' for further information on the James Bond legal battles between Sony and MGM.

★ Licence To Thrill: A Cultural History Of The James Bond Films, Chapman, James, , , I.B. Tauris, 1999, ISBN 1-86064-387-6

External links

★

★

★

★ Official James Bond website

★ MGM's official site for ''Thunderball''

★ Universal Export's entry on ''Thunderball''

★ Thunderball Overview on ''The Ultimate James Bond Community''

★ Production notes for Thunderball — MI6.co.uk

★ Thunderball — The Bond Film Informant

★ "McClory, Sony and Bond: A History Lesson — Universal Exports

★ Thunderball obsessional; a website devoted to all things, ''Thunderball''